fingerprint
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fingerprint, impression made by the papillary ridges on the ends of the fingers and thumbs. Fingerprints afford an infallible means of personal identification, because the ridge arrangement on every finger of every human being is unique and does not alter with growth or age. Fingerprints serve to reveal an individual’s true identity despite personal denial, assumed names, or changes in personal appearance resulting from age, disease, plastic surgery, or accident. The practice of utilizing fingerprints as a means of identification, referred to as dactyloscopy, is an indispensable aid to modern law enforcement.
Each ridge of the epidermis (outer skin) is dotted with sweat pores for its entire length and is anchored to the dermis (inner skin) by a double row of peglike protuberances, or papillae. Injuries such as superficial burns, abrasions, or cuts do not affect the ridge structure or alter the dermal papillae, and the original pattern is duplicated in any new skin that grows. An injury that destroys the dermal papillae, however, will permanently obliterate the ridges.
Any ridged area of the hand or foot may be used as identification. However, finger impressions are preferred to those from other parts of the body because they can be taken with a minimum of time and effort, and the ridges in such impressions form patterns (distinctive outlines or shapes) that can be readily sorted into groups for ease in filing.
Early anatomists described the ridges of the fingers, but interest in modern fingerprint identification dates from 1880, when the British scientific journal Nature published letters by the Englishmen Henry Faulds and William James Herschel describing the uniqueness and permanence of fingerprints. Their observations were experimentally verified by the English scientist Sir Francis Galton, who suggested the first elementary system for classifying fingerprints based on grouping the patterns into arches, loops, and whorls. Galton’s system served as the basis for the fingerprint classification systems developed by Sir Edward R. Henry, who later became chief commissioner of the London metropolitan police, and by Juan Vucetich of Argentina. The Galton-Henry system of fingerprint classification, published in June 1900, was officially introduced at Scotland Yard in 1901 and quickly became the basis for its criminal-identification records. The system was adopted immediately by law-enforcement agencies in the English-speaking countries of the world and is now the most widely used method of fingerprint classification. Juan Vucetich, an employee of the police of the province of Buenos Aires in 1888, devised an original system of fingerprint classification published in book form under the title Dactiloscopía comparada (1904; “Comparative Fingerprinting”). His system is still used in most Spanish-speaking countries.
Fingerprints are classified in a three-way process: by the shapes and contours of individual patterns, by noting the finger positions of the pattern types, and by relative size, determined by counting the ridges in loops and by tracing the ridges in whorls. The information obtained in this way is incorporated in a concise formula, which is known as the individual’s fingerprint classification.
There are several variants of the Henry system, but that used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States recognizes eight different types of patterns: radial loop, ulnar loop, double loop, central pocket loop, plain arch, tented arch, plain whorl, and accidental. Whorls are usually circular or spiral in shape. Arches have a moundlike contour, while tented arches have a spikelike or steeplelike appearance in the centre. Loops have concentric hairpin or staple-shaped ridges and are described as “radial” or “ulnar” to denote their slopes; ulnar loops slope toward the little finger side of the hand, radial loops toward the thumb. Loops constitute about 65 percent of the total fingerprint patterns; whorls make up about 30 percent, and arches and tented arches together account for the other 5 percent. The most common pattern is the ulnar loop.
Dactyloscopy, the technique of fingerprinting, involves cleaning the fingers in benzene or ether, drying them, then rolling the balls of each over a glass surface coated with printer’s ink. Each finger is then carefully rolled on prepared cards according to an exact technique designed to obtain a light gray impression with clear spaces showing between each ridge so that the ridges may be counted and traced. Simultaneous impressions are also taken of all fingers and thumbs.
Latent fingerprinting involves locating, preserving, and identifying impressions left by a culprit in the course of committing a crime. In latent fingerprints, the ridge structure is reproduced not in ink on a record card but on an object in sweat, oily secretions, or other substances naturally present on the culprit’s fingers. Most latent prints are colourless and must therefore be “developed,” or made visible, before they can be preserved and compared. This is done by brushing them with various gray or black powders containing chalk or lampblack combined with other agents. The latent impressions are preserved as evidence either by photography or by lifting powdered prints on the adhesive surfaces of tape.
Though the technique and its systematic use originated in Great Britain, fingerprinting was developed to great usefulness in the United States, where in 1924 two large fingerprint collections were consolidated to form the nucleus of the present file maintained by the Identification Division of the FBI. The division’s file contained the fingerprints of more than 250 million persons by the early 21st century. Fingerprint files and search techniques have been computerized to enable much quicker comparison and identification of particular prints.
Other “fingerprinting” techniques have also been developed. These include the use of a sound spectrograph—a device that depicts graphically such vocal variables as frequency, duration, and intensity—to produce voicegraphs, or voiceprints, and the use of a technique known as DNA fingerprinting, an analysis of those regions of DNA that vary among individuals, to identify physical evidence (blood, semen, hair, etc.) as belonging to a suspect. The latter test has been used in paternity testing as well as in forensics.
